Measles Outbreak and the Effect on College Communities
Across the United States, measles has had another outbreak for the first time since 2000, and students are being diagnosed on college campuses in Georgia.
An unvaccinated student at Georgia State University was diagnosed with measles in November of 2025. The diagnosis was involved with international travel.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the end of January 2026, there have been 588 confirmed cases of measles across the United States.
What is Measles?
Measles is a highly contagious disease with signs of a fever, cough, rash, and runny nose.
In 2000, measles was declared an eliminated disease in the United States, meaning that there were “sufficiently few” cases, with a small chance of an outbreak starting. This is different from an eradicated disease with zero cases found worldwide.
In Georgia, herd immunity is 95%. Herd immunity is the proportion of people vaccinated that is needed to eliminate the disease.
The measles vaccine is only about 97% effective.
Isaac Chun Hai-Fung is an infectious-disease epidemiologist and associate professor at Georgia Southern University. Fung said that because measles doesn’t mutate as rapidly as COVID-19 or the flu, vaccinated people are considered immune; however, it remains highly contagious.
“Our immunity may wane, that’s why even adults are recommended to take it again,” Fung said. “On average, one person infected with measles, they are going to pass it, on average, to 11 to 19 people.”
Impact on College Campuses
At Georgia Southern University, one of the required vaccinations that students must have for enrollment is the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine, along with the Varicella, Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Hepatitis B vaccinations.
According to Logan Cowan, an associate professor of biostatistics at Georgia Southern University and a PhD in Epidemiology, there could be certain exceptions for why a student may not have the vaccine. In K-12 schools, parents can apply for exceptions based on religious beliefs and other kinds of objections to the vaccine process.
“Oftentimes, school districts have a hard time navigating the legitimacy of those kinds of claims,” Cowan said. “School administrators are not epidemiologists, so oftentimes I think if parents want an exception, they’re sort of automatically granted that.”
Generally, people’s immune systems can fight measles successfully, except in cases with infants and immunocompromised individuals.
Twenty-year-old college student Ruby Doran suffers from juvenile arthritis, an autoimmune disease.
“With autoimmune diseases, your body is fighting against your own body, so when we’re so much more susceptible to those kinds of sicknesses, ” Doran said.
People with autoimmune diseases are first in line for getting vaccinations like the COVID-19 vaccine because of how “at-risk” they are.
Not only would students with autoimmune diseases be more at-risk for catching measles if there were to be an outbreak, but since the disease is highly contagious, it wouldn’t take long for the sickness to spread around a whole college community.
“If you think about things like dorms, Greek living, and even houses and apartments with roommates, compared to single-family residents, the housing density is much larger,” Cowan said. “Further, things like in-person classes also create room for transmission to occur.”
An outbreak like COVID-19 is unlikely to occur again, but the primary step to preventing an outbreak would be to isolate infected individuals and people they’ve closely interacted with.
The quickest and easiest way to prevent an outbreak would be by encouraging student vaccination.